BAGHDAD and AMMAN - Chief United Nations weapons inspector Hans Blix
knew it. Former weapons inspector Scott Ritter knew it. French, German
and Russian intelligence knew it. Sultan Hashim Ahmad - Iraq's former
minister of defense, now safe after a cosy deal with the Americans -
knew it. In 1995, Hussein Kamel, married to one of Saddam Hussein's
daughters and the man in charge of it all, knew it. The Central
Intelligence Agency (CIA) in Langley and the MI6 in London knew it.
Saddam's regime was not lying when it claimed that it had destroyed
all its WMD after the 1991 Gulf War. Whatever the spin, the fact of
the matter is that now there's conclusive proof that both US President
George W Bush and UK Prime Minister Tony Blair lied about the reason
for invading Iraq.

As it was widely reported at the time, on the night of August 7, 1995,
General Hussein Kamel, former director of Iraq's Military
Industrialization Corp - the organism in charge of Iraq's weapons
program - defected to Jordan, along with his brother, Colonel Saddam
Kamel. Hussein Kamel managed to smuggle tons of documents with him
with priceless information about different Iraqi weapons programs. A
few days later, Saddam's regime went on the offensive, presenting
another set of documents showing that Iraq had conducted an aborted
crash program to develop a nuclear bomb. A few months later, Hussein
and Saddam Kamel made the biggest mistake of their lives. Following
family pleas and giving credence to assurances from Baghdad, they
returned to Iraq in early 1996, and were inevitably killed by Saddam's
secret services.

On August 22, 1995, Hussein Kamel was interviewed in Amman by three
top Western officials: Rolf Ekeus, executive chairman of UNSCOM from
1991 to 1997; Professor Maurizio Zifferero, deputy director of the
International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and head of the inspections
team in Iraq; and Nikita Smidovich, a Russian diplomat who led
UNSCOM's ballistic missile team, and Deputy Director for Operations of
UNSCOM. Major Izz al-Din al-Majid, a cousin of Saddam Hussein's who
defected with the Kamel brothers, was also present. Unlike the
brothers, he remained in Jordan and exiled himself in Europe in an
undisclosed location.

The key document - shown to Asia Times Online by a Jordanian
intelligence source - is in the form of an internal UNSCOM/IAEA report
classified as "sensitive". On page 13 of what is the transcript of the
UNSCOM/IAEA interview with Hussein Kamel, he categorically says, "I
ordered the destruction of all chemical weapons. All weapons -
biological, chemical, missile, nuclear were destroyed." He also says
that "not a single missile was left, but they had blueprints and molds
for production. All missiles were destroyed."

Kamel discloses that anthrax was "the main focus" of the Iraqi
biological program (pages 7-8). He confirms all weapons and agents
were destroyed: "Nothing remained after visits of inspection teams."
Kamel also says, "They put VX [nerve gas] in bombs during the last
days of the Iran-Iraq war [of the 1980s]. They were not used and the
program was terminated." On page 13, Rolf Ekeus asks Kamel if Iraq had
restarted VX production after the Iran-Iraq war. Kamel says, "We
changed the factory into pesticide production. Part of the
establishment started to produce medicine [...] we gave instructions
not to produce chemical weapons." On page 8, Kamel insists that "I
made the decision to disclose everything so that Iraq could return to
normal."

In August 1995, both the Bill Clinton administration in the US and the
John Major government in the UK took Kamel's assertion that Iraq had
destroyed its entire stockpile of chemical and biological weapons and
banned missiles - as Saddam's regime claimed - very seriously. But
this "sensitive" interview was kept secret for more than seven years.
It was only leaked in early 2003. Kamel's interview was then endlessly
spun by Bush and Blair. But the key point remains undisputable:
Saddam's regime destroyed all its WMD after the 1991 Gulf War.

This was not the soundbite that the Pentagon neo-conservatives wanted.
So they listened instead to their lone "humint" (human intelligence)
on Iraq - which entirely consists in the person of Ahmad Chalabi,
founder of the Iraqi National Congress (INC) - an organization
basically created by the US - a convicted fraudster in Jordan, and
rotating chairman during the month of September of the 25-member,
American-appointed Iraqi Governing Council.

Chalabi, a 54-year-old banker, heir of a rich Shi'ite family, was
living in early 2003 in a lavish mansion in Tehran paid by the State
Department, plotting his triumphant return to Iraq after more than two
decades. He never had any political support inside Iraq. After his
conviction - 22 years - in Jordan in the early 1980s for bank fraud,
nobody knows what he made of lavish funds dispensed to the INC by the
CIA in the mid-1990s. And in late 2002, nobody also knew what happened
to half of the US$4.3 million once again dispensed to the INC.

Chalabi is an extremely persuasive character. It was himself who
proposed to Washington a mutual collaboration against Saddam.
Ultra-conservative American senators Trent Lott and Jesse Helms loved
it, as well as the "Prince of Darkness" Richard Perle, the CIA and the
Jewish lobby. In their 1999 book Out of the Ashes, Andrew and Patrick
Cockburn paint a devastating portrait of CIA agent Chalabi's wheelings
and dealings since 1991. But the fact is Washington would never trust
the INC to depose Saddam: the emphasis - or wishful thinking - relied
on a coup orchestrated by the army. Chalabi was progressively
relegated to oblivion. In desperation, he launched a plan in 1996 for
Kurds to attack Iraqi army units stationed in Mosul and Kirkuk. The
operation failed miserably. Chalabi was totally discredited in the
CIA's eyes, and they turned to another potential and more trustworthy
agent: Ayad Allaoui, chief of the Iraqi National Accord (INA).

With the neo-cons in power, the tireless Chalabi managed to get back
into the limelight via the Pentagon - even though the CIA and the
State Department now openly despised him. The go-between was none
other than Richard Perle. Once again, this correspondent in the past
few weeks has been able to reconfirm that Chalabi's street credibility
in Iraq is less than zero. The most flattering compliment he gets is
that he may be the new "American Saddam".

In his new self-attributed role of respected statesman, Chalabi was
part of the Iraqi delegation to the recent UN General Assembly. In the
first address by an Iraqi to the 191-member body since the fall of
Saddam's regime, Chalabi could do no better than scold France,
Germany, Russia, Syria and in fact most of the planet for opposing the
American invasion. He said absolutely nothing about a UN role in Iraq
- now desperately wanted by the Bush administration. He said
absolutely nothing about how and when Iraqis will get back their
sovereignty - a key UN demand. But true to form, Chalabi promoted his
own personal political causes: he called for the "eradication" of
Ba'ath Party members "once and for all".

The Pentagon still buys his take that the Iraqi resistance is
conducted by "remnants of Saddam's regime". In fact, the Pentagon
still parrots everything Chalabi says. But on a more serious note,
Chalabi can be accused of promoting a sectarian war in Iraq. Weeks
before coming to the UN, he recommended the arrest of brothers, sons,
nephews and cousins of Ba'ath Party members and former Iraqi army
officials, as well as male Iraqis between the ages of 15 and 50 if
illegal weapons were found in their homes. If this "recommendation"
was to be taken seriously, it would mean no less than an horrendous
civil war.

Chief US weapons inspector David Kay's interim report on WMD has
already proved that the Bush administration was chasing a ghost. In
fact, Kay should save the extra 600 million demanded by Bush for the
investigation to continue and ask the Pentagon's "humint" Chalabi
where the weapons are. With friends like Chalabi, "liberated" Iraqi
certainly doesn't need enemies.